Purity of motive in a full moral consciousness means not only (formal) sincerity, but sincere love of good and right. This was not stated by the Hebrew in abstract terms, but in the personal language of love to God. In early days there had been more or less of external motives in the appeals of the law and the prophets. Fear of punishment, hope of reward, blessings in basket and store, curses in land and field, were used to induce fidelity. But some of the prophets sought a deeper view, which seems to have been reached in the bitterness of human experience. Hosea's wife had forsaken him, and should not the love of people to Jehovah be as personal and sincere as that of wife to husband? She had said, "I will go after my lovers _that give me my bread and my water, my wood and my flax, my oil and my drink_."[60] Is not serving God for hire a form of prostitution?[61] The calamities of the nation tested the disinterestedness of its fidelity. They were the challenge of the Adversary, "Doth Job fear God for naught?" And a remnant at least attested that fidelity did not depend on rewards. The moral maxim that virtue is its own reward is put in personal terms by the prophet after the exile: "For though the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation."[62]